A correspondent sent me an argument I hadn’t heard before that concludes that it’s not morally permissible for libertarians to work for public universities, and in this week’s column, I’d like to examine that argument. To telegraph where I’m going, I don’t think the argument works, but even if I’m right, it doesn’t follow that it is morally permissible for libertarians to work in public universities. To show that requires much more than a refutation of one argument for its impermissibility.

The argument I want to look at, stated in the words of my correspondent is this:

In America today, we have seen a radical acceleration in the form of advancing covid tyranny, political censorship, central bank–fueled inflation, the mainstreaming of cultural Marxism, and a federal regime looking to turn the tools of the war on terror against its own citizens.

After twenty years of failure in Afghanistan, the US government is embarking upon yet another unwinnable war. This time around, however, the military-industrial-congressional complex isn’t pulling the strings.

Eighty years ago, the American economist Paul Samuelson published his acclaimed doctoral dissertation “The Observation Significance of Economic Theory,” which would later form the basis of his book Foundations of Economic Analysis. These works were instrumental in convincing the majority of economists that the use of mathematical and statistical methods are the indispensable means of investigating economic phenomena. Any economist who objects to the “Samuelsonian consensus” is derisively referred to as a literary economist.

His reply read, “Ok, found the statist.” A grin spread across my face as I chuckled at his response. It was, after all, in jest. My friend was well aware of my hesitant feelings towards the state. But many online are deadly serious while machine-gunning the term “statist” at anyone failing to toe their line. Unable to pinpoint its earliest deviation point, it’s fair to look to the anarchist movement’s recent involvement in redefining the term for its purposes.

Libertarianism is logically consistent with almost any attitude toward culture, society, religion, or moral principle. In strict logic, libertarian political doctrine can be severed from all other considerations; logically one can be—and indeed most libertarians in fact are: hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant enemies of religion in general and Christianity in particular—and still be consistent adherents of libertarian politics.

Like virtually all of the work of Ludwig von Mises, these two essays, his 1958 Liberty and Property and his 1950 Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism are timeless. They are as important now as they have ever been and will increase in relevance as the growth of government continues almost unabated.

[Editor’s note: Two interviews from August 1992, given by Murray Rothbard to the Swedish student publication Svensk Linje (continuously published since 1942) were recently discovered in the Rothbard Archives and translated by Sven Thommesen for the first time. In this interview, Anton Wahlman, an economist from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, interviewed Rothbard about Sweden and European integration with the rise of the ECU (euro). The interview took place in August 1992.